This Week: U.S. Housing and Human Rights Tour

Friday, November 20 – Massachusetts Institute of Technology at 12:30pm-2pm and Emerson College at 3pm-5pm

﻿Saturday, November 21 – Alliance to Develop Power at 12pm

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Folks,

I hope this message finds you well. Over the past few month, I have been helping to organize a visit to the U.S. by a South African social movement activist from the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign (www.antieviction.org.za).
South Africa will be on the global stage as host of the 2010 World Cup. Yet, with one of the world’s highest rates of economic inequality and social protest, it is likely that the country’s glaring contradictions and its militant poor, perhaps more so than the “beautiful game,” will be center stage next summer.

For the past nine years, Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign has been one of the most prominent organizations of militant poor, fighting against evictions and police brutality as well as for free basic service and quality health care in South Africa’s poor and working class communities. As a coordinating body of over 15 community organizations in the Western Cape Province, the AEC has been at the forefront of challenging the neoliberal economic policies have been imposed since the fall of apartheid, recently helping to found the Poor People’s Alliance as a national network of poor people’s movements.

This month, one of the Anti-Eviction Campaign’s coordinators, Ashraf Cassiem, is going around the U.S., speaking at college campuses and meeting with activist to share information about post-apartheid community struggles, particularly with the forced removals and the resulting protests taking place in the run up to the 2010 World Cup. He is also here to witness the work being done in the U.S. around layoffs, foreclosures, and other issues that have come to the fore with the current recession.

I know this is short notice, but I wanted to make sure you knew about our events. Please feel free to come and bring your friends if you can.